Coming Undone: A Novel

by JD Salyers

  18

  When Landon yells an answer and the voice doesn't repeat itself, he's suddenly very aware of being alone in the forest without any explanation. He ignores the pain in his body and scrambles for the branches, scrambles to get himself upright and at least somewhat able to defend himself. His mind tries frantically to find some clue, some memory of why he's here. By the time he's on his feet and under the meager shelter of the dripping trees, he's about to pass out from the pain and unable to come up with any hints.

  For a few minutes, he just rests. Logic dictates that he should find the person who owns that voice and get help - he definitely needs help.

  At the same time another part of his mind is telling him to be wary of other people. Who - besides him, apparently - would be out here in this storm, moving around? All the sportsmen, hunters and fishermen and hikers, would be inside at home, out of the elements.

  More importantly, he remembers stories about the kind of people who would be up to no good out here. Maybe he is interrupting some sort of crime. Maybe he's about to stumble into a pot field. Didn't they booby-trap those things, to keep people out? He clearly remembers reading that somewhere, too. It's irritating - why can't he remember the circumstances that led to this predicament, instead of some article from years ago? How is he going to figure it out and get his butt out of here?

  He knows that he's in a dangerous spot, too. He never had to read an article about how predator animals go for the weak and fearful, and right now he's both of those things. The only thing keeping him safe, most likely, is the severity of the storm driving every living thing to shelter.

  Suddenly, the gun at his side is a lot more comforting. It may not be effective against some of the animals around here, but it will sure slow 'em down.

  Wait. He blinks, staring into the dark. Where, exactly, is around here? North Carolina. His mountain, his land, where he always takes the family.

  How does he know this? How is he sure?

  He hasn't got a clue, but he does know it, as sure as he knows...well, not much else right now. But he knows this, and that's a place to start, isn't it? It's something to work with if he ever wants to get out of here alive.

  Thunder rolls overhead, above the soaking rain, and startles him so that he nearly loses his precarious upright position. He wraps one arm around the tree for balance, and uses the other to wield the branch-crutch so that he doesn't fall over. He's exhausted and hurting and lost, and falling again will only make his position worse. He pulls himself into the trunk of the tree and tries to be small. Less water hitting him that way, he hopes.

  OK, if he's in North Carolina like he thinks, he'll be up on Razorback.

  Well, as close to the river as he is, he'll actually be at the base of the mountain. But he's positive he's got the general area right. As best he can remember, he needs to watch out for bear, maybe a mountain lion, and the infamous razorback boar that gives the ridge its name. Of all of these, the boar is the most terrifying, as well as the deadliest.

  Also, humans. Other than the boars, another human in these woods could be as deadly as any animal, maybe more so, because humans kill for all kinds of reasons that don't involve food.

  He is thinking about how to put plenty of distance between himself and the fast rising river when a new sound startles him. The sound is so low that he almost can't hear it, a dull thud of noise that seems ominous for no reason. It catches his attention because it is not a rolling sound like thunder, and it's too low-pitched to be part of the river's current. It makes his spine tingle. He waits, but the sound doesn't come again.

  The river is still climbing, faster than ever. He needs to get to higher ground.

  The crutch helps, but his progress is still agonizing - and agonizingly slow. He's moving barely an inch at a time, it feels like. At this rate he'll drown, only a few yards from safety. He looks over his shoulder constantly, as if the river is chasing him specifically, because that's what it feels like. Legs trembling, pain shooting through his body with every step, and the incessant desire to simply sit down and sleep, come what may, are battles that wear on him all the way to the top. When he finally reaches flat ground and falls in gratitude and exhaustion, he lets out an involuntary sob of relief.

  There can be nothing worse than this.

  And he still doesn't remember.

  He struggles to his feet again and shines his flashlight around. The wind is sharper here above the river. He realizes that he's on a trail. It's soggy and slick and dark as the devil beyond his flashlight beam, but it's definitely a trail. It even looks somewhat familiar. He checks both ways as far as he can see, looking for any clue as to which way to go, but all he can see are tree branches blowing wildly, like they're beckoning him. Overhead, between their tops, is a mass of roiling black. No moon. The clouds are low enough that he feels like he could touch them.

  A heavy gust nearly blows him over, and he needs to pick a direction. He tries to remember which way the voice had come from and can't. Indecisive, he hesitates, then simple frustration pushes him to the right. It leads uphill - a harder trek - but downhill is probably flooded. Also, his camp was up near the top. He remembers that much, he can see it in his mind's eye. All those sunrises, all those starry panoramas by the fire with his wife and boys.

  He focuses on that - the mental picture of his boys and his wife - but their faces blur when he tries to clarify their features. It angers him, but his anger feels impotent and debilitating, stealing what energy he has left.

  First, find shelter. Then find help. There has to be someone else on this mountain, someone he knows. He seldom, if ever, came up here alone.

  A memory surfaces in the midst of his first inching, hitching steps. A man. Old guy, smiling at him and teasing him about driving a Ford. He lives here, Landon remembers, near the river. He owns the mountain...no, he owns part of it, though. Landon doesn't know how he knows that, or where exactly the man lives, but he remembers the old man hiking up to spend an evening and share some homemade peach brandy, so it can't be too far from the camp.

  But that leads him back to another question - where the hell is camp? Is he at the base of the mountain now - a quarter mile below it? Or did he fall and wash downstream? The first is a blindingly torturous hike uphill with a bum leg. The second would explain how he broke the thing in the first place, but it would also mean he's completely lost.

  Anger pushes through him. Why can't he get his thoughts straight? Where is his family? He swipes at the water running down his face and keeps going, assuming that he'll run into something familiar sooner or later. Maybe the old man, maybe the camp. Either way, he hopes that the storm let's up. Thunder ushers him up the trail.

  The ground feels steeper than it looks. He has to stop every twenty feet or so to catch a breath and get his balance. Slow down, he thinks. You're going to kill yourself. Every hopping, stumbling step jars him with new pain. His hands, wrapped around the branch and the flashlight, are blue-cold. His shoulders ache and his stomach is in knots, trying to curl in against the freezing rain. Chilled to the bone, his mother used to say when he got like this. You'll catch your death.

  He snorts at that. Death might catch me before this is over with, he thinks.

  It's easier said than done, because the slower he goes, the faster his thoughts bubble. There has to be something terribly wrong if he's in this predicament. There has to be a threat, and that scares him to death, because whatever the threat is, it must involve his family too, because they wouldn't just let him be lost like this. They'd be looking for him.

  Unless they can't. What if something is keeping them from him? Or someone? There are rough characters in these mountains, men and women who live their whole lives away from civilization, who make their own rules. The thought chills him like nothing else, enough to make him stumble and land one shoulder hard against a tree trunk, sending more pain through him.

  The thought also does something else, though. It motivates him. His boys are small and so help
less against a grown man, and his wife, if he remembers right, is also a slim tiny creature, unable to fight against any physical threat. She would be at the mercy of whoever threatened the boys. That thought is terrifying, so he pushes it away, but that doesn't change anything. The urge to get to them, to save them, overrides everything else in his mind, even the pain and cold. His wife and kids most likely needs him, and he doesn't have time for indecision.

  The slope begins to steepen, but he keeps pushing. At least I'm armed, he thinks. That will help against whoever is bothering my family.

  He just wishes he could remember their faces, but how hard will it be to spot a woman and two young boys on a mountain in the middle of a storm? He's confident that he'll know them when he sees them, and no one will ever know about his lapse.

  19

  Melody doesn't want to answer the phone. She feels sick and cold, feels it as she makes her way down the shadow-washed hall and into Janice's bright kitchen, all the way to the desk near the back door. She feels it when she takes the phone from her daughter-in-law, and she sees it in Janice's questioning, worried gaze.

  She hears the strain in James's voice when he says her name. "Son, what's happened? What's wrong?"

  "It's Dad, Mom. Something's happened to him."

  Fear surges through her, along with a dull thud of acknowledgment. She knew this trip was a bad idea. She knew something terrible would be the result. Didn't she? "Tell me what's going on, James Collin Briggs. Don't you dare lie."

  He hesitates, but only for a moment. He doesn't want to tell me, she thinks. He doesn't want me to worry, but now he has no choice.

  Then he says, "Mom, We've lost him."

  His voice breaks on the word lost, in time with Melody's heart. It’s the one word she doesn't want to hear. The one word she can't hear, or she might just lose her grasp on her emotions. Her knees give way and she fumbles behind her for the chair. "James," she says, and her own voice sounds foreign in her aching throat.

  "Mom, he's been acting strange, like something is really wrong. I've already called in to the rangers and they're sending people, but I need to know what's going on."

  The wind rattles the kitchen window across the room, making her jump. She thinks about so many things all at once - Landon, the storm, the gun she saw him slide into his duffle. "He- he shot at you?"

  Not Landon. He loves his boys. He would never hurt anyone. She wills him to be OK. She silently prays for him to climb up out of his hole, as he calls it, to come to safety.

  "No, Mom. God, no. He...I might have just startled him, and he pulled out his handgun. He didn't shoot, though. You know what a good shot Dad is," he tries to make a joke of it and fails. "I wouldn't be standing here talking to you if he'd shot at me."

  That was true. Or at least it used to be true. Did the disease affect his skills? She didn't know, and now she wishes that she'd asked.

  "Your father is suffering from Alzheimer's, James."

  Behind her somewhere, Janice gasps. She ignores it. "He's ...losing control of his mind, I suppose you'd say. It isn't bad, not yet, but he's liable to be confused. He's liable to forget..." She can't keep talking. She can't describe to her son the vacant days of his father, the man he loves and respects so much. "You know."

  James says, "OK, OK that's good to know. We'll find him, Mom. I promise."

  "Please be careful. It might affect his moods," she whispers, and then the phone goes dead. She stares at it, angry that it disconnected her from the current world of her husband.

  She turns and looks at Janice, who comes and hangs up the phone, then kneels down beside her, in the floor. "Mom, why didn't you say anything?"

  "He made me promise," Melody says, and the reason sounds like an excuse. "He wanted one more weekend with the boys before everything changed, I guess."

  "You mean before he let the full force of his problems take hold."

  Melody nods. Janice squeezes her hand and sighs. "All right. You've got good men out there looking for him. He'll be all right."

  Melody doesn't look up. She just stares at her hands twisting, like snakes in her lap. "He could get hurt. This storm..."

  Janice glances out the window. "There's nothing we can do about that, I'm afraid. But James will find him and keep him safe. James will get him home, Mom. Peter is there, too, he'll help."

  Melody nods. She knows. She knows the boys won't let harm come to their father.

  She looks up. "I'm not worried about them. I'm worried about him."

  "What do you mean?"

  The baby starts to fuss in the nursery, and she leaves the room to get her. Melody almost breaks down then, alone and so far away from Landon's side. But by the time Janice comes back, she's gotten herself under control.

  "What do you mean - worried about him?" Janice asks again.

  So, reluctantly and fully aware that she's breaking her promise, Melody tells her. About the holes, the confusion. How sometimes he doesn't know who she is or where he is and how it makes him nervous. She tells about their argument, and about how she saw Landon pack the small, deadly handgun in his duffle bag.

  When she'd questioned him, he'd soothed her worries. "We're probably just going to plink some tin cans," he assured her. He hadn't seemed worried at all.

  "Well, he probably meant it," Janice says. "I bet he hasn't even taken it out of his duffle bag."

  Melody nods.

  "And he wouldn't shoot his own sons, anyway," Janice adds.

  "What if he doesn't recognize them?" Melody asks.

  "They're his boys..."

  "And I'm his wife, but sometimes he doesn't recognize me," Melody snaps. "I'm sorry. So many things can go wrong."

  "But most of them won't. He'll be home tonight or tomorrow, probably. Then we can take care of him, all right? He'll be safe."

  Melody prays that all this is true. The baby, soft in sleep again, curls against her mother and pops a thumb into her mouth.

  "Should I call the police down there?" she asks.

  Janice shakes her head. "The rangers will find James, and they'll know what reinforcements they need. They're used to doing things like this, I'm sure. It can't be the first time."

  Thunder boomed and made both women jump. Melody looks up like she could see the sky through the ceiling. "It's not letting up," she says quietly, thinking that Landon hates getting wet. "What if he's hurt? They might not find him for days."

  "They'll find him."

  Melody wants to believe her, but the empty ache in her gut won't allow it. She fights the urge to ask Janice for her car keys, to drive up there and look for him herself. Janice wouldn't hand them over anyway, and Melody wouldn't blame her. It's not the prudent thing, to lose both of them in the storm. Janice has a good head on her shoulders, a much better head than Melody does right now.

  "All we can do is wait. He'll call back soon, and everything will be fine."

  Melody wants her to be right, and she forces a small smile. "I need to be alone for a moment," she says. "Can I use your bedroom?"

  Janice nods. "Of course, Mom. Whatever you need."

  In the bedroom, closed off from Janice's optimism and the storm, Melody falls to her knees at the foot of the bed and begins to pray, ripping her heart out and offering it to God for Landon's safe return. It’s the only thing she knows to do, the only way to reach him from here.

  20

  James isn't sure what was taking so long. The rangers should have been here by now, he's pretty sure, and the fact that they aren't is nerve-wracking. He holds Jakey against his shoulder and paces a circle around the fire pit, being careful to stay under the shelter. He hopes they'll show soon. Who knows where his dad is, or what's happening to him right now?

  His mother's words ring in his ears, long after he loses signal. His parents, together, were the steady pillar of his life, and now that one of them is slipping, he can barely fathom it. How does a man handle that? He knows people do, all over and since time began, but how? He can't begin to imagine
his father cold, weak and too confused to find safety.

  James doesn't know a lot about Alzheimer's, but he's heard the horror stories, same as everybody else. He did work once for a man who was suffering with the disease, and that hadn't gone well. The man had forgotten he'd hired James's company to fix the drainage in his back yard, and had come barreling out his back door with a shotgun, threatening to shoot them for trespassing. That had been a scary few moments, with most of his guys hiding behind the dozer until the man's wife came out and calmed her husband, then explained to the crew what was going on.

  James had watched the man's angry confusion turn to a kind of defeated shame, and just seeing that broke his heart. Afterward, he’d thought about the wife and tried to imagine some point in the future when Janice might be in that situation, and it had legitimately scared him. Now, his own mother is in that woman's shoes, and she hasn't said one word to any of them about it.

  And why has his dad decided to keep this a secret? Landon was always blunt about the truth of things, even when they were unpleasant. Why would he choose now to change that? Especially concerning something so important? It just doesn't make any sense.

  "Bobble, Daddy," Jakey murmurs against his neck.

  James and Janice weaned him off the bottle last year, but once in a while, when things are in an uproar or he isn't feeling well, Jakey still wants the old standby. James doesn't begrudge him, and he's glad that Janice packed a couple of those cardboard cartons of milk in the cooler.

  There is only one problem - Jakey's bottle is in the truck. James had forgotten it. Even worse, he isn't comfortable holding Jakey and trying to steer the four wheeler safely. A wreck could get either - or both - of them seriously hurt. He is going to have to walk.